PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 95, 21 April 1917, Page 10

PSYCHOLOGY OF WAR

NOTABLE GERMAN'S STATEMENT.

Dr. Magnns Hirschfeld, a well-known Berlin pathologisV contribute* a pamphlet to the Deuteche Kriegsschnften on the " Psychology of the War." Hirsehf eld says nothing which is either new or profound in his careful analysis;'; but his utterances are of a character which no German published would have dared to print two years ago. They show _the distance which has been travelled since the wild days .when Haeckel, Harnack, Ostwald, and others lauded war to the skies as the re-awakener and regenerator of the national soul. ! .

Hirschfeld emphatically asserts that war can never serve as a purifier or reA generator of the soul of man, or, a fountain of life for him in which the nation may renew its youth. Nine-tenths of all mankind, if they would only be candid, recognise in war a horrible .misfortune. How eager even the advocates of "healing" war are to lay the burden of its responsibility on the shoulders of others! No nation, no man, willingly bears the responsibility for launching a war on the world. , ; ' - :

There is not one virtue, says Hirschfeld, seen in war—heroism, unselfishness, fidelity, self-sacrifice—which •■cannot _be matched, indeed surpassed, by the quiet, unaffected heroes and heroines of peace. "War awakens tha intoxication of blood and destruction. Cunning, is met by more refined cunning, force is everything, and makes the unlawful lawful, murder is elevated to courage. The desire for plunder goes hand in hand with all the other phenomena of the soul. And just as the greed of plunder possesses the soul of the individual, so does it in another; shape seize hold on the soul of the, nation."; ■" War," says Hirschfeld in conclusion, "is a proof of intellectual. poverty, for one only' takes refuge in the sharpness of one's sword when the sharpness of one's understanding fails. War 19 only the horrible bloodrbaptism of the future unity of' European society. And it is not enough that this war ends with a peace :. it must end with a reconciliation. "In. no essential and vital things dp •the interests of nations clash. It is only abstract thing* which drivo them vs